On May 17, 1792, the New York Stock Exchange was formed.
On May 17, 1954, in a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional.
On May 17, 1973, the U.S. Senate’s televised hearings into the Watergate scandal began.
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.
On May 16, 1717, writer Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, was imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year when his epic poem, La Henriade, infuriated the government.
On May 16, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising ended. During the uprising, some 300 hundred German soldiers were killed, while thousands of Warsaw Jews who perished. Virtually all the former ghetto residents who survived the battle were sent to the Treblinka extermination camp and were murdered by the end of the war.
On May 16, 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, making criticism of the government a criminal offense. Specifically verboten was the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government, its flag, or its armed forces or language that could cause others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted of violating the act received sentences of imprisonment for 5 to 20 years. The act was repealed on December 13, 1920.
On May 16, 1966, the Communist Party of China issued the “May 16 Notice,” beginning the Cultural Revolution.
On May 15, 1988, after more than eight years in Afghanistan, Soviet troops began their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
On May 15, 1972, Alabama Governor George Wallace, the Democratic presidential candidate with the most total votes, was shot at an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland, by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The next day, while fighting for his life in a hospital, he won major primary victories in Michigan and Maryland. However, Wallace remained in the hospital for several months, bringing his third presidential campaign to an end.
On May 15, 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York.
On May 15, 1972, the island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverted to Japanese control.
On May 14, 1607, Jamestown, Virginia, was settled as the first English colony in the future United States.
On May 14, 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention began to assemble in Philadelphia to confront changes to the Article of Confederation. Though the convention was supposed to begin on May 14, it had to be pushed back until May 25, when a sufficient quorum of the participating states had arrived.
On May 14, 1961, a Freedom Riders bus was fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protesters beaten by an angry mob.
On May 13, 1846, in a blatant attempt to grab territory, the United States declared war on Mexico beginning the Mexican-American War.
On May 13, 1940, Germany invaded France as the German army crosses the Meuse and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech to the House of Commons.
On May 13, 1954, Chinese students demonstrated against the British government’s decision to make young men, ages 18 to 20, do part-time military service. The students were unwilling to defend a foreign government which, during World War II, deserted Singapore.
On May 13, 1960, hundreds of University of California at Berkeley students protested the campus visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Thirty-one students are arrested and the Free Speech Movement was born.
On May 12, 1780, Americans suffer their worst defeat of the revolution with the unconditional surrender of Major General Benjamin Lincoln to British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton and his army of 10,000 at Charleston, South Carolina. Having suffered the humiliation of surrendering to the British at Charleston, Major General Lincoln was able to turn the tables and accept Cornwallis’ ceremonial surrender to General George Washington at Yorktown on October 20.
On May 12, 1949, the Soviet Union lifts its blockade of Berlin.
On May 12, 1963, Bob Dylan walked out on The Ed Sullivan Show, after being told he cannot sing, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a satirical talking-blues number poking at the ultra-conservative John Birch Society.
On May 12, 2003, fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers stop business in the Texas Legislature by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.